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If you do not have a dedicated website for your startup or small business, you risk falling further behind your competitors.

You may believe that you are growing your fan base on Facebook (if you are purchasing fans on Facebook through advertising, you are most likely wasting your money), sharing small bits of content on Twitter, and adding images to Pinterest. However, without a centralized digital home, you are dispersing your efforts and passing up a fantastic opportunity to engage and connect with your clients and future consumers through a dedicated site.

After all, your clients will eventually want to learn more about your company’s products and services, and a dedicated website will assist them in doing so.

Today, we will discuss best practices and tips for web design in Manchester; Markustudio a freelance web designer in Manchester providing web design, logo branding, print, SEO and digital design services. We have a passion for serving successful small businesses and big brands across the UK. If you need help creating a style guide or staying consistent with your branding, our team of experts is here to assist you. We’ll work with you to create a unique and unforgettable brand that will help you stand out from the competition.

We’ll connect you to useful resources and examples, as well as highlight recent changes in web design. If you currently have a website but are thinking about redesigning it, you should start with your homepage.

Some business owners are now concerned that the expense of website design will be prohibitively expensive.

Here are our top ten suggestions for creating an outstanding website design.

1. Keep the design minimal, contemporary, and one-of-a-kind.

Your website represents your company’s image. It is the first impression a visitor will have when visiting your site for the first time.

If you use an off-the-shelf template and your website appears like thousands of other sites on the Internet, you will miss out on an opportunity to make a distinct impression.

How can a potential buyer remember your site when she has viewed dozens of others that look exactly like it?

In recent months, we’ve heard from a number of business owners who built their website utilizing one of the existing template sites.

As their firms have expanded, those owners have realized the need of standing apart from the competitors. The template sites no longer meet their requirements.

This comes as no surprise.

The homepage is often the most crucial page on a business website; when potential clients visit your site, they will most likely view that page first.

Additionally, because most small business and startup websites have fewer than a dozen pages, the homepage serves as a vital anchor for the entire site. It must answer numerous critical questions, including who you are and what you do.

Template sites just cannot do this correctly.

While some of the themes are visually appealing, they lack numerous components that make a website useful and helpful for potential buyers.

Think about the impression you want to make and the message you want to send to your clients and potential customers.

As you plan your website, make sure you have a good logo design.

A logo made using clip art or a template will be unoriginal and will leave a negative impression. Worse, it may expose you to significant legal risk.

Some business owners spend in new website design but overlook the need of creating an original logo (or to update their old clip-art based logo). This is a squandered chance.

When deciding what material to publish on your site, keep this in mind: consumers typically read only 28% of the words during an average visit.

Don’t overburden your homepage with content and photos.

Think about the most crucial content and images you want your users to see, then remove everything else. Many people make the mistake of including too much stuff on their homepage, which leads to confusion and a poor user experience.

Add less, not more.

Keep in mind that your visitors may be using laptops and mobile phones, so avoid building pages for large display sizes or pages with complicated features or difficult navigation.

Tip: You can use recent design trends to update the look of your site. Flat design, for example, has grown in popularity. If you’ve used iOS 7 or later on an iPhone or iPad, or Windows 8, you’ve experienced flat design firsthand. Flat design reduces gradients and shadows, resulting in smaller, easier-to-read images and typography. Simple animations (including cinemagraphs – live animated images/video), larger photos, graphics, more scrolling, and larger typefaces are among the other 2016 design trends.

Learn more about 2016 design trends. Consider illustrations for a more refined appearance.

While photos have traditionally dominated online design, many sites are including imaginative illustrations into their homepages. Illustrations can frequently engage the consumer in more intimate ways. Consider how Basecamp depicts its support staff members using graphics. Basecamp could easily have included images of each individual, but illustrations are more fun, unique, and convey some personality.

Advanced Tip 1: After designing your homepage, you may perform simple tests to see which buttons, colors, and bits of content get the most hits. After all, marketing is both a science and an art.

Advanced Tip 2: Think about what action you want the user to take and build a prominent call-to-action button.nbsp;

Particularly on your homepage, but also on other pages where you’re attempting to urge the user to take some action.

A call to action (CTA) on your homepage is a vital aspect to entice visitors to explore your site further.

When designing your CTA, you should consider a few important factors, such as: (a) location (above the fold – visible on the monitor when the page first loads is typically ideal), (b) make sure the CTA stands out from the other content on your site, (c) create a link to another page so that your call to action will draw the visitor deeper into your site, (d) create a less-emphasized alternative variation, (e) and test design, content, and

It is critical not to overburden your homepage (or any page, for that matter) with CTAs. Choose one or two and concentrate on them. If you have too many, you will produce a lot of noise for consumers, which will cause a lot of confusion.

2. Display your goods and services.

You are promoting a product or service. Make sure the product or service is prominently displayed on your homepage. I’ve seen several small business web designs that failed to successfully present their products or services, as well as many that attempted to showcase far too many products or services on a single page.

You only have a few seconds to make a good first impression, and you should make it a professional one.

If you offer things and your clients will buy them online, you must ensure that the product photos – or graphical images and descriptions – are clean, crisp, and acceptable. You can have an excellent website design, but if your product photographs are poor, prospective customers would think twice about purchasing your stuff. Examine how well-known online retailers promote their products (Amazon, Apple, and Zappos are all good examples).

If your product or service is web-based, consider using images of phones or computers with your showcase images embedded within them. This will assist customers anticipate how they will interact with your product or service.

Tip: Avoid overcrowding your website with photographs or graphics. Although it has been stated that a picture is worth a thousand words, visuals can also be used to confuse and divert attention. Choose a few good product photos to highlight on the homepage. You can promote your other products on the inside pages.

3. Take note of site load times.

When surfing websites, people are impatient, and slow load times have an influence on conversions (getting people to buy your products or services).

If your site design is graphically intensive, ensure sure you have the necessary infrastructure and bandwidth to support it.

This is especially important if you serve a large customer base and anticipate high traffic to your website.

By selecting good hosts, you can enhance the load times of your website.

Important to remember is that the cheapest monthly hosting package does not always provide the best value. It may be inexpensive, but it is also likely to be slow and unreliable.

4. Make your website easy to find.

Think about how persons with disabilities (such as color blindness) might learn about your products and services if they visit your website.

Also, think about how those with slower internet connections will interact with your site. This is extremely crucial for small businesses, particularly rural small enterprises that cater to local customers; accessibility is one of the best ways to endear your company to such customers.

Tip: Keep your website’s style and navigation consistent throughout. Don’t use dissimilar designs on different pages of your website. The overall layout and design of all pages should be consistent. This is one of the most prominent reasons why business owners may think about redesigning their website in 2016.

5. Organize your website to create a better user experience.

Search engines appreciate well-organized websites.

People also enjoy well-organized environments.

Remember that when prospective clients visit your site, they are usually looking for specific information. They will rarely read complete pages; instead, they will skim headlines and brief bits of text, as well as look at photographs or graphics (although not all of them on the same page).

A properly structured site that offers information in an orderly and organized manner will far outperform one that appears chaotic.

Tip: Use bold, easy-to-read fonts and bullets to deliver vital information or to emphasize points you want readers to take attention of.

Use text color to emphasize the most critical information, but keep text color and fonts to a minimum. You want to emphasize rather than confuse.

Remember that most people will disregard content if the title above it does not intrigue them – so don’t ignore good headlines (more on this in tip 6 below).

6. Content is essential.

You’re probably aware that search engines rank websites based on the quality of their content (and links). The more material you have on your site, the more appealing it is to search engines (more on search engine optimization in tip 9 below).

People enjoy the content as well. In fact, poor content can quickly drive a visitor away from your website. Don’t underestimate the power of headlines; they can imply the difference between a visitor reading the remainder of the information and abandoning your site.

Keep the content up to date. Visitors may quit your site quickly if your 2016 website has content from 2013.

Tip: Research your successful competition, particularly those who have been in business for a longer period of time than you. Examine their websites to see how they market their products and services to current and prospective clients. Examine their site’s colors, voice, graphics, illustrations, and images, as well as the general site organization. Don’t be hesitant to utilize brighter colors. People have always preferred muted hues, but we anticipate to see more vivid and vibrant colors in 2016. More information and tips for assessing your competition can be found at

7. Recognize the distinction between design and development.

To create a website, you will need both site design and site development. Although some freelancers are capable of doing both, the talents required for design and development are often distinct, and you may wish to hire different persons for each component of the task. Freelance web developers typically specialize in either frontend or backend work.

Frontend developers are often concerned with the client-side – what your visitors view when they visit your website. Backend developers are typically concerned with the interaction between the server and the databases.

Backend engineers frequently work on a variety of projects, including scripting to allow your users to interact with the site, web server settings, and the development of e-commerce services such as a payment system.

A good freelance web developer is knowledgeable in a variety of areas, such as web design, information architecture, usability engineering, web content management systems, web server administration, database administration, software engineering, project management, network security, and search engine optimization.

Tip: When looking for a freelance website designer and/or developer, look for at least three people (or businesses) and request thorough quotations. Remember to request a few examples of their previous work so that you can assess their style and experience. If you wish to consider Markustudio as one of your alternatives, we have some of the most competent web designers in Manchester.

8. Consider the domain, but don’t get too caught up in it.

Your domain will convey critical information to your visitors. It could tell them what your company does. Or it could simply be an efficient way for people to find your website. If you can’t find a URL that matches your business name, you can change it or discover an alternate URL that includes the name – or one that complements the name.

I’ve gone through the company naming process several times, and it can be a really frustrating affair. Find a domain that is easy to remember, but don’t get too caught up in it.nbsp;

Tip: Consider how your site’s URLs will appear to search engines and people. Use natural-sounding names for your URLs and titles whenever possible (this is easy to accomplish when using content management systems, such as a WordPress blog).nbsp;

9. Don’t forget about search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).

Efforts invested on one marketing campaign generally detract from other marketing initiatives for a small business.

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are highly specialist topics that necessitate a significant time investment to learn.

However, SEO and/or SEM efforts can provide significant leverage to small firms and, as a result, should not be overlooked.

10. Make use of a responsive design.

Mobile devices are becoming a larger portion of web traffic. In fact, several companies, such as Facebook, have more individuals accessing their websites through mobile devices than on desktop computers. This upward trend has been ongoing for several years and will continue in 2016.

There is no going back.